By Katrina Maccalous, M.S. Ed.

Hello again readers! I have spent the last couple of months writing and rewriting several articles on solving word problems. I found myself becoming overwhelmed by the amount of information I had to share, so I have since decided to put that part of the project on pause (for now!) and take some time to focus on another aspect of word problems…interpreting remainders!

I don’t know about your experiences with teaching children to interpret a remainder in a division word problem, but for me, it’s an ongoing process of model, guide, practice, feedback, and repeat! The ability to successfully solve these types of problems requires students to be able to think about real-world contexts and determine what makes the most sense based on the situation and the question asked.

There are many activities out there on this topic, but I am super excited to share the strategies that I have started using with my students! I wanted to really focus on the types of questions and key words that coincide with each type of remainder situation as a way to support my students who struggle with making sense of the problem. I first, posed a story for my students WITHOUT any questions. We discussed what was happening and drew it out.

After that, I began asking questions about the story (see our work below). Each question modeled a different way to interpret the situation. I had the students make some observations about the questions and the answers we gave. The purpose here being, to get them to notice that the computation remained the same, but which part of the answer we provided depended on what the question was asking.

Together we identified each type of question and charted our thinking. Here’s the original poster in all of its glory! (I am left-handed, and when I am in the moment teaching, my hand-writing is NOT the pretty handwriting of my anchor charts! 😂 So, please pardon my hand-writing here!

At this point, I launched into my mini-lesson on types of remainders. You can check out that lesson here (or below).

For our guided practice, students were given a variety of word problems. I told them that I did NOT want them to solve the problems yet. I just wanted them to read and analyze each scenario to determine what we were being asked to answer (round up, ignore the remainder, etc.). Through this activity, I was able to provide feedback and guide students to justifying their thinking with the support of our anchor chart.

Once I felt students were ready, I had them take another situation and create their own questions for each type of remainder situation. This allowed me to see if students were able to identify the particular wording of each type of question for themselves. As they created their own questions for the problem, they also provided the correct answer for each.

Tip: I have kept the remainder sort in ziploc bags for a math station, so students can revisit this topic during spiral review throughout the remainder of the school year.

You can get this resource as both a PDF AND interactive virtual activity at my TPT store.

Don’t forget to check out my other articles (…and I promise, the rest of my posts on word problems will be coming soon!), subscribe so you never miss another posting, as well as check out my TPT store and newly established You Tube education channel for more resources, ideas, and lessons!

Happy Teaching!